This week Dr Grumble will be lecturing to GPs. He will be showing them the results of research to inform their practice. The practice of medicine depends on science. Doctors have to understand that science. That, in Grumble's book, makes doctors scientists.

David Nutt is being referred to as a scientist but he is also a doctor. People trust doctors but not, strangely, scientists. On the other hand people who do medical research are revered.

I fear that the public think that scientists are slightly mad dangerous people who sit in labs with bubbling test tubes and that doctors are people who magically make them better. Some doctors do both.

One of Dr Grumble's children is a medical student and has been in Cambridge this weekend presenting his research conducted in Brazil. Dr Grumble's oldest child is an F1 doctor. He has done research on behavioural genetics. Probably neither would call themselves scientists but they are in a way. And Dr Grumble has clinical scientists who work for him.